x264
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 3 of 6 video encoders by recommenders
Free H.264 video encoder that people praise for better quality at the same bitrate and efficient compression. Its most common caveat is heavy CPU use, which costs time and power.
Free H.264 video encoder that people praise for better quality at the same bitrate and efficient compression. Its most common caveat is heavy CPU use, which costs time and power.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 79%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better quality at same bitrate
“I usually use x264 as mkv which is CPU bound because it produces a much better looking video vs using h264.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “DaVinci Resolve 21.1” “Good H.264 encoders like x264 is capable of producing excellent FullHD video at just 2-3 mbps”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux” “x264 that seemed to just put out substantially better quality video for the same bitrate”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)” - Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)”
Clever techniques, very good compression
“it was and still is sort of magic how many smart techniques are baked into something”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)” “produces very good compression for raw emulator captures of retro game footage”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “The 1987 Game "The Last Ninja" was 40 kilobytes” Low latency, used for remote desktop
“x264 was handling the encoding side with sub-frame latency 15 years ago”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “FFmpeg 8.1” “They should try and look at xrdp with x264 as a start.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “We replaced H.264 streaming with JPEG screenshots (and it worked better)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy CPU, power and time cost
“x264 (and x265!) beat the pants off of them if one can spare the time and electricity”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “H.264 Is Magic (2016)” “When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File” “the compute cost of all the encoding on CPU is crazy high”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “We replaced H.264 streaming with JPEG screenshots (and it worked better)”
Other video encoders people recommend
The four most recommended other video encoders, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AV1 | 48 | 22 | 69% | 12 | — | Approved |
| VP9 | 12 | 5 | 71% | 6 | — | Approved |
| x264This page | 11 | 3 | 79% | 8 | — | Approved |
| SVT-AV1 encoder | 11 | 2 | 85% | 6 | — | Approved |
| x265 | 7 | 1 | 88% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
14 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“x264 (and x265!) beat the pants off of them if one can spare the time and electricity”
“x264 that seemed to just put out substantially better quality video for the same bitrate”
“it was and still is sort of magic how many smart techniques are baked into something”
“I usually use x264 as mkv which is CPU bound because it produces a much better looking video vs using h264.”
“Good H.264 encoders like x264 is capable of producing excellent FullHD video at just 2-3 mbps”
“perhaps this is an old repo which has recently been rebased onto a newer (but still not particularly new) revision of x264”
“H264 done with a good encoder like x264”
“exploitable vulnerabilities, caused by memory safety, found in openh264, x264, dav1d”
“produces very good compression for raw emulator captures of retro game footage”
“there is x264 to get around the remaining patent issue”
“x264 was handling the encoding side with sub-frame latency 15 years ago”
“When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills.”
“They should try and look at xrdp with x264 as a start.”
“the compute cost of all the encoding on CPU is crazy high”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.